Abstract

All US government pesticide residue datasets show that persistent organochlorine (OC) insecticide residues are surprisingly common in certain foods despite being off the market for over 20 years. Residues of dieldrin, in particular, pose substantial risks in certain root crops. About 60% of the samples of organic vegetables found to contain pesticides are contaminated with OCs. Government regulators, organic certifiers, and the food industry will face growing pressure to develop methods to identify OC contaminated fields and avoid production of crops prone to assimilating OC residues in harvested foodstuffs.